A new bonus mission available in Hitman 3 has a large quantity of dialogue that does not have subtitles, raising concerns for the game’s accessibility.
As spotted by GameByte, the latest bonus mission for Hitman 3 that is based within the Dartmoor map contains a lot of surrounding dialogue that is not subtitled. Prominent Hitman players will know that surrounding dialogue often highlights clues to target activity or offer subtle guidance to different areas or people of interest.
However, for this bonus mission, as exemplified in the below Twitter embed, a large number of surrounding audio does not have subtitles despite the subtitle feature being turned on. This issue continues throughout different parts of the map.
Subtitles are sometimes present for surrounding dialogue, and sometimes they aren’t. In Hitman 2, for example, a crowded Miami level that featured surrounding dialogue revealed information about the world. This helped players that rely on subtitles to pick out key points of conversations and even pointless things that add to the world like “I need a drink”. However, not everything was subtitled.
This lack of NPC subtitling has been a consistent pain point in our reviews, with our Hitman 3 review reading, “The most infuriating subtitle issue in Hitman 3 (which has been an issue since Hitman) is the complete lack of subtitles for non-story mission NPCs that interact with you.”
But the extent of what isn’t subtitled in the above video is certainly a problem. GameByte has reached out to IO Interactive for comment on whether or not this is something that will be addressed in a new update. But so far there has been no word.
